Eric Marks

CII named Eric Marks of the Georgia Institute of Technology as the first recipient of its 2014 Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant Award. This newly established award goes to a deserving graduate researcher at the completion of his or her research team’s research cycle. Eric earned the honor for his remarkable dedication and effort on Research Team (RT) 301, Using Near Miss Reporting to Enhance Safety Performance. Active from the start, Eric took responsibility for many of the team’s important efforts, including collecting construction site survey data, analyzing that data, and performing administrative tasks. His early and sustained involvement proved to be vital to the team’s success, especially after the devastating loss of its principal investigator, Dr. Jimmie Hinze in 2013.

Not long after the loss of Dr. Hinze, the team suffered a second set-back as the team’s second academic, who was also Eric’s doctoral advisor, resigned on short notice. This left Eric to shoulder the entire research effort on his own. In the ensuing months, Eric steadfastly took on the essential academic duties for the team, diligently producing research deliverables, creating presentation templates, and demonstrating deliverables for review. Moreover, Eric’s research experience in construction safety proved to be critical to the research. His team members report that, without his passion for the research and his tireless work to bring it to a successful conclusion, the team’s report-out would have been diminished, if at all possible.

It is because of his unflagging dedication, significant research contribution, and overall performance above that expected, that CII most gratefully bestows its Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant Award to Eric Marks.

CII, based at The University of Texas at Austin, is the research and development center for the capital projects industry.